BiPolar
Curated by Andrea Pollan, Curator’s Office, DC
SCHOOL 33 in Baltimore, MD
January 17 to March 8, 2014
Opening Reception: January 17, 2014
6pm to 9pm
Participating artists:
Lauren Frances Adams
Katie Duffy
Mary Frank
Hedieh Ilchi
Dan Perkins
From Pollan’s curatorial statement:
Lauren Frances Adams dives into Elizabethan colonial history and transforms her findings into an installation that includes wallpaper, gourds, a painting, and pearls. Herfascination with how territories are colonized by historic powers begins with herresearches into fashion of the age. In her artist-designed wallpaper, Adams examined thefamous Hardwick Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. Her gown includes embroideries of thenatural history discoveries of that era that the artist has given special focus to on herwallpaper. On this theatrical backdrop she hangs a fictive portrait of a Native Americanwearing a towering costume of ruffs and collars appropriated from portraits of Englishexplorers and politicians. Adding conceptual texture and oddity, Adams has scattered pearls, the kinds that so frequently encrust the gowns of the colonizing aristocracy, with the gourds deemed precious by the Native American tribes along the North Carolina coastline, Adams thereby compresses time and geography and prods our conscience onthe value of one society dominating another.]]>